Another upcoming appearance for your diaries: March 2nd, I’ll be appearing on stage with a fantastic lineup of childrens’ authors as part of the Children’s Book Council of Australia– WA’s A Night With Our Stars event. Alongside the likes of James Foldy, Kylie Howarth, Norman Jorgensen, Teena Raffa-Mulligan and Meg Caddy, I’ll be talking about Magrit, writing, and all things froody and writerly. Here’s a poster, even, saying exactly that:
I’ve been amused to note that promotion for the event has referred to me as a “new talent” (although at least they say ‘talent’). It’s a risk you take when you hop genres: not every reader will come with you, and not everybody in the new field will know your track history. Still, after 16 years, it raises a smile, particularly as I’ve just been interviewed by a fellow speculative fiction author for a paper she’s writing on the subject of writing time.
So, for those of you who may be meeting me for the first time due to Magrit, or came in late, or just have some sort of vague slightly-less-than-indifferent interest in how I came to this place, here’ the potted history I provided to my academic friend:
16 YEARS A KNAVE
I started writing as a way of concentrated creativity (as opposed to writing purely for self) in my last years of High School– I was starting to stand out as an English student at the creative end of the spectrum, rather than the critical, and it was a way to accelerate that sense of achievement. My year 12 teacher recognised something in me that I, perhaps, hadn’t– that there may be a germ of genuine talent in what I wrote, rather than a glib facility for getting easy marks– and encouraged me to think of a literary carer as something achievable.
At the end of Year 12 I applied for, and received, entry into the Australian Defence Force Academy– I was off to become a Lieutenant in the Army. Two days before I was due to fly out I suffered a catastrophic crisis of confidence: I cancelled my flight, cancelled my appointment, and went to University for the next 3 years to study writing, instead– I quite literally ran away from the Army to become a poet!
- Through Soft Air, to Orb Magazine
- Carrying the God, to Writers of the Future, and
- The Habit of Dying, to Alien Q. (No link, because they stiffed me on payment, and I had to threaten legal action to get them to take the story off the page, so screw them.)
